Love Untethered

IN HER ARMS, 2017 by Malcolm Liepke Hello there! Let's blow away some dust off this old thing! Realized the description still says I am 22, well that is no longer the case. Yours truly is a 25 year old woman! YAY! So as an adult I would like to initiate my come back by addressing...

MeToo: Safe Spaces

Backstory: The last few days have witnessed a heavy wave of the MeToo movement where people were outing their abusers and the discussion started after an account with the handle @SudaniMeToo shared a story about a Sudanese rapper. Following that, many people started sharing their stories anonymously which in return started the conversation about the...

A Man Bigger Than Life

Happy father's Day to Papa Jaffar! Happy Fathers day to my grandfather. My grandfather was an early morning cup of English breakfast tea He was a napkin perfectly folded to keep all the messy parts of life in place He was a Beethoven's symphony most days but a Swan Lake some others My grandfather was...

Another Book

Virginia Woolf Portrait. Giclee print by Bett Norris If our friendship was a book, it would be co-authored by Virginia Woolf and Jodi Picoult. It would be filled with relatable lines about life. It would be filled with what if's, maybes and an array of possibilities.  Our friendship was definitely a book. Started slow. The first...

Falling out of 2019

The Invention of Life, 1928 by Rene Magritte After graduating med school, which really felt like strenuous labor, I spent the better half of 2019 looking for myself. But just like a dream, the more I thought about it the less and less I knew. The repercussions of that, which mainly took the form of...

Middle Ground

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer You stay up late at night overthinking things you said a few years back, You day dream about how you would have done things differently if you ever got the chance to go back … You do those things relentlessly, almost daily But one day it will...

Haleema Bit El-Gadal

Design by the brilliant Yasmin E aka Kandaka Khronicles Somewhere in the early 50's in a place called Jabal Awliya there was a woman called Haleema Bit Al Gadal. She was her father’s only child after her brother passed away. Al-Gadal was a very strict man who was feared by everyone but despite his difficult...

Clandestine; coming out of a secret society.

Artwork "Stay Frida" by Alaa Satir   — A rendition of Frida Kahlo with the Arabic word "Frida" written which means Unique or matchless. I was a woman born with identity-crisis. I was conceived and born in an Arab country to African parents who kept me away from the Arab society. I found myself in...

I don’t smoke

I'm a concept often romanticized by the unfortunate. Don't do it — I advice you.  I, like the cigarettes you smoke, am no good for you. I'm merely a social butterfly. A writer burning her thoughts on endless pages for fuel. A writer on a journey of self discovery armed with nothing but a pen...

This Country

Mama when I was a child you worked really hard to hide how ugly the world is outside. You knew I was too fragile. Frankly mama you still think I'm too fragile because I hear it in your voice every time you call to check on me after a funeral, or loosing a loved one,...